


Tall Tales

by trustingHim17



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Gen, Slice of Life, Superstition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:41:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26933041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trustingHim17/pseuds/trustingHim17
Summary: A glimpse into a relaxed evening at Baker Street
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Tall Tales

The question came before I fully entered the sitting room.

“Who was it today?”

I dropped my bag next to my desk and sank into my chair before I bothered to answer. “Miss Mundy,” I answered with a sigh.

He glanced up from his chemistry set. “You have not mentioned her.”

“She’s a young Mrs. Brown,” I said with an annoyed groan, referring to another patient I had described—in depth—many times before. “Today, she was insisting I tell her whether she will have a boy or a girl.”

He frowned. “I thought there was no way to know that.”

“There’s not, but she thinks that if I tie her wedding ring on a string and hold it over her stomach, the direction it swings will prove whether the child is a boy or a girl. She refused to believe me when I told her it would not work. People believe the strangest things.”

A faint grin twitched his face, though his gaze remained on the beaker he held. “I imagine around arguing with you about that, she was also complaining about various aches and illnesses whether they existed or not.”

“Got it in one,” I muttered, leaning back in my chair.

Silence answered me, and I let my eyes drift closed, wishing only for a lazy evening after dealing with the excitable Miss Mundy on top of a long day of other patients. I could easily fall asleep in my chair, and if Holmes was going to experiment all evening, I gave it a fifty-fifty chance the sitting room would remain quiet enough to sleep.

A loud crackle morphed into an even louder _pop_ on the heels of that thought, as I had half-expected. I did not jump, and I debated whether I wanted to give him any reaction at all.

“Holmes?” I said calmly a minute later, cracking an eye open to find him staring at me.

He raised an eyebrow, trying not to let a mischievous smirk escape. He had done it on purpose, trying to get a rise out of me, and I knew it. He would pay for it another day.

“Neither of us believe in those old wives’ tales. Lay off the explosions for a while, there’s a good chap?”

His suppressed smirk turned into a bark of laughter. He had received many different reactions over the years to that particular prank, but this was the first time I had responded quite like that.

He made no other reply, however, and I smirked, fully opening my eyes. “You do not know that superstition, do you?”

He rolled his eyes at my amusement but was forced to shake his head. “You know I delete most of those ridiculous beliefs. Which one references explosions?”

“Supposedly, one way of getting rid of hiccups is to startle the person.”

He thought for a moment before nodding decisively. “I shall remember that the next time you have the hiccups.”

I scowled at him, eyeing a pillow nearby. “Step away from the chemistry table.”

“I think I would rather not.” A smirk twitched his mouth.

I huffed, beginning to plan ways to make the coming payback more interesting, but he spoke before I could decide on one.

“What other superstitions do you know?”

There was true interest in the question, and I thought about it. “I have told you about parents warning their children that if they make a face, it will stay that way, but have you heard the one about the family dog?”

He shook his head, slowly putting away his chemistry set to join me by the fireplace.

“There is a belief among the lower class that putting a dog hair in your morning coffee will cure a hangover.”

He froze, staring at me for a moment as disgust warred with surprise and amusement, and I chuckled.

“I think it is a twisted version of both interpretations of the saying ‘hair of the dog that bit you,’” I told him as he returned to putting his chemistry supplies away. “One interpretation says that if you are bitten by a diseased dog, drinking a potion containing the dog’s hair will cure you, and the other holds that drinking more alcohol will cure a hangover. None of the versions have ever been proven.” I paused, then added mischievously, “but perhaps that could be your next experiment.”

He smirked. “Would you prefer terrier or mongrel?”

“Neither, thank you,” I shot back. “I said _your_ experiment, not mine. You know I hate it when you experiment on me.”

His smirk grew, and he set aside the last beaker and seated himself in the other armchair. “When I was a child,” he volunteered, “Mycroft tried to convince me that a cat would steal a baby’s breath.”

“So that is why you don’t like cats,” I returned, fighting to keep a straight face. “Did one try to steal yours?”

He scowled at me, and I chuckled. “One of the Irregulars told me that eating a watermelon seed will make the fruit grow in your stomach.”

He rolled his eyes. “They should know better,” he muttered, and I smirked again, knowing there would likely be a biology lesson sometime soon. “My brother,” he continued, “also tried to make me believe that cows on a hillside always face north.”

“That one is not a superstition,” I answered. “Cows usually face north or south. I have no idea why, but I used the neighbor’s herd to find my way home more than once.”

He gained the thoughtful expression that said he would be testing that the next time we were near cattle, and I rolled my eyes.

“What about medical superstitions?” he asked before I could voice the sarcastic remark that had come to mind.

I huffed. That was too easy, after spending an afternoon telling a young lady that those sayings were false.

“Today,” I replied, “I learned that eating carrots will give a person night vision.”

He quirked a grin. He could see in low light much better than I could, but he hated carrots, and I loved them. We proved that superstition wrong just by being in the same room.

“What else?”

“Holding your nose when sneezing can make your brain come out of your ear,” I responded immediately.

That one nearly startled a laugh out of him. “People actually believe that?”

“Indeed,” I struggled to hide a mischievous grin, “but they usually disregard the one that is actually true.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Which is?”

“That silencing too many sneezes can pop your eyeballs out of their sockets.”

I fought to keep a straight face, but he stared at me for only a moment before releasing a bark of laughter, and I grinned, grabbing my pipe from the mantle.

“Well, have you heard the one about curing a toothache by chewing on a thistle plant?” I asked as I packed some tobacco into the bowl.

He shook his head. “I would expect that to make a toothache worse, but there is a rhyming one I heard last week that may have some truth to it.”

“Oh?” I glanced up, tossing the taper I had used to light my pipe into the fire. “What is that?”

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

I had not heard that one before, and I inhaled when I should have exhaled, nearly choking on the smoke. It took a moment for my initial cough to change to laughter, and Holmes waited, smirking at catching me off guard.

“I imagine it depends on the doctor,” I told him around my laughter, pausing just long enough for him to try to deduce where I was going with this, “and only if the apple is well-aimed.”

He had obviously not been thinking of the saying’s other possible meaning, but it took him only a moment to flip the words in his mind, and he laughed heartily before voicing yet another superstition. I would have to watch out for flying apples for the next couple of days, but catching him by surprise twice in the space of a few minutes had been well worth it.

Or so I told myself three days later, when I entered the sitting room to find him futilely trying to juggle three heavily bruised apples—which he promptly launched in my direction.

He was not as amused when he discovered I could actually juggle them.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is always greatly appreciated :)


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